Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway’s home near Havana to be restored by US and Cuba

Havana: The US and Cuban authorities have announced a project to restore American Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway’s home near Havana, where he penned one of his most famous and last piece of fiction, “The Old Man and the Sea”.

Hemingway stayed in Cuba for a long period of time, from 1939 until just before he committed suicide on July 2, 1961.

The famous writer originally stayed in the Ambos Mundos hotel in Havana and then moved out to his colonial-style residence, Finca Vigia.

An American foundation, restoring the legendary writer’s home in Cuba, on Saturday, signed an agreement with the Cuban government to import construction material directly from the US to aid the preservation efforts, CNN reported on Sunday.

The joint US-Cuban project will build a workshop adjacent to Hemingway’s home in Cuba to restore and maintain thousands of the famed writer’s documents, rough drafts and letters.

Mary-Jo Adams, the executive director of the Boston-based Finca Vigia Foundation, named after the writer’s house, said the foundation has received approval from the American and Cuban governments to bring $860,000 worth of supplies from the US for the new construction.

In January, as part of a shift in the US policy towards Cuba, President Barack Obama authorised the exportation of building materials to the island for the first time since the US broke relations with the island following the 1959 revolution.

His widow, Mary, donated the house to the Cuban government, which displays Hemingway’s books, clothing and even a collection of fermented lizards.

Many of Hemingway’s works are considered classics of American literature. Some of the most famous ones are “A Farewell to Arms” (1929), “For Whom the Bell Tolls” (1940) and “The Old Man and the Sea” (1951) for which he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.

Author Kazuo Ishiguro photographed during an interview with Reuters in New York. voa

Stockholm October 5: British author Kazou Ishiguro has been awarded the Nobel Prize Literature 2017.The prize committee in Sweden says Ishiguro, through his novels, has “uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.”

The committee said the 62-year-old author was born in Nagasaki, Japan. He moved to Britain when he was five-years-old.

Ishiguro has written numerous novels, but the committee said on Twitter his most celebrated work was The Remains of the Day, a story about a butler at an English country estate.

The novel was turned into a movie featuring Academy Award winners Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.

Swedish academy secretary Sara Danius said Ishiguro is “a writer of great dignity” who has “developed an aesthetic universe all his own.”

“He is a little bit like a mix of Jane Austen, comedy of manners and Franz Kafka. If you mix this a little, not too much, you get Ishiguro in a nutshell,” Danius said.

As the recipient of Nobel Prize Literature 2017 and the $1.1 million prize, the world’s most prestigious literary award, Ishiguro joins the ranks of Doris Lessing and Ernest Hemingway.

The recipient last year was poet/songwriter Bob Dylan, an influential contributor to popular music and culture for the past half century.

The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded 110 times between 1901 and 2017, according to NobelPrize.Org. (voa)